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The awkward twang of a poorly-executed chord. A laugh, high and wavering and endeared with slight self-deprecation.
“Look, I told you I’m not that great.” gloved hand fumbling with tuning pegs, the pitch of each note growing less discordant as he does. “It’s just a hobby. I only do it for fun.” another one of those high, self conscious laughs. “You know, fun. Ever heard of it?”
Head resting against one hand, Shadow sits halfway between uncomfortable wood panel floor and a faded rug littered with empty soda cans. He glances up at Sonic; perched on his mattress’ edge, guitar balanced delicately across his lap as he continues retuning. The fluster is obvious in the awkward flutter of his hands, the right drumming nervously against the red body of the instrument, left flying up and down the fretboard but making no move to actually play the thing.
“This isn’t a talent show.” Shadow finishes another can of Chaos Cola and crushes it in his hand. “I’m not sitting here judging you–” he meets Sonic’s incredulous glare with equal measure– “Okay, well just pretend I’m not here. Or something.”
“Real hard to do when you’re looking at me like that.” Sonic grumbles, fingers knocking against the strings in a half-hearted warmup. He sighs out a bashful breath, smiles shakily as if to psych himself up, and adjusts the instrument’s position again. “Hoo. Okay.”
The guitar had been sitting in the corner of Sonic’s room for as long as Shadow can remember, miraculously dustless despite its seeming lack of use – or so Shadow had thought, until he’d made the grave mistake of knocking the thing with his elbow earlier and Sonic had immediately taken to fretting over it like a child with a scraped knee.
Shadow’s bemused questioning about it had led to Sonic growing unusually sheepish, a little pink in the face.
“I’ve had it since I was a kid,” he’d explained, running his fingers over its scratched but clearly lovingly maintained surface. “First thing I ever fixed up for myself. Um.” self-conscious hand rubbing at the back of his neck, “Not that I really have a whole lotta time to play nowadays.”
Given the booming riffs that Sonic’s music taste leans so heavily toward, it makes perfect sense. Though the man himself – back pressed to his sloping bedroom ceiling, guitar hooked up to a cheap amp that lets out an objecting shriek when the cable shifts even slightly – isn’t giving even half of the boisterous rock star confidence that litters his playlist.
The moment Shadow moves his gaze back to the heavily postered wall is the same that Sonic actually starts playing. Unsure, clear in the unstructured clamouring of the first few notes, then gradually melting into something more. It rings familiar; a more mellow play than Sonic’s usual preferences, but something he recognises from the usual rotation Shadow’s always hearing faintly from his clunky old headphones.
He closes his eyes, so easy to lose himself in something like this. Unlike Sonic, he doesn’t have much propensity toward the constant feedback of a portable player and headphones. Maybe it’s just the time he was born in; he and Maria dancing clumsily to the same handful of songs played from the only record player from the ARK they’d been allowed, the room awash with the melody, leaking out into the halls where some scientist or other would eventually tell them to keep it down.
Though not quite. Clinical as it was, no song could soften the ARK’s sharp, impersonal corners, the desperation permeating each attempt at normalcy. Here, on Earth, in the small of Sonic’s cramped little room, it’s so much easier to simply be.
Sonic’s playing isn’t perfect – far from it. Every so often he gets ahead of himself, notes jumbled atop eachother, paired with a soft curse or nervous laugh. Some sections executed with rote precision, others played with unsure hesitation that trails off into improvisation. It’s earnest and flawed and drags up some soupy outrageously warm feeling in Shadow’s heart, the same heart that stutters to the final pause in Sonic’s playing.
Shadow opens his eyes. Sonic’s still as apprehensive as he’d been at the start, staring at him expectedly; when their eyes meet, he cracks his signature grin.
“Thought I’d bored you to sleep for a sec.” his gaze turns unexpectedly shy again, turning it back to the instrument in his hands. “So, uh. Not bad? Like I said. Haven’t played in a while–”
“It was lovely.” Shadow replies immediately; candidly, unabashed.
There’s golden sunset streaming through the tiny window beside the bed, warming the room in balmy orange. Playing across Sonic’s face just so, enough to highlight the flush that creeps onto his muzzle at the words; catching at the edge of his hands, still splayed across the guitar’s surface in perfect imitation of the final note. A moment suspended in time; like something out of a painting. Something out of a dream.
“Really,” he commits the seconds to memory, the pleased scrunch of Sonic’s answering smile, the imperfect sincerity of it all. “I thought it was beautiful.”